DAILY READINGS & SERMONS
DAILY MASS READINGS
Tuesday 21 October 2025
Tuesday of week 29 in Ordinary Time
Liturgical Colour: Green. Year: C(I).
Readings at Mass
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First reading
Romans 5:12,15,17-21
Divine grace, coming through Jesus Christ, came as an abundant free gift
Sin entered the world through one man, and through sin death, and thus death has spread through the whole human race because everyone has sinned; but the gift itself considerably outweighed the fall. If it is certain that through one man’s fall so many died, it is even more certain that divine grace, coming through the one man, Jesus Christ, came to so many as an abundant free gift. If it is certain that death reigned over everyone as the consequence of one man’s fall, it is even more certain that one man, Jesus Christ, will cause everyone to reign in life who receives the free gift that he does not deserve, of being made righteous. Again, as one man’s fall brought condemnation on everyone, so the good act of one man brings everyone life and makes them justified. As by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous. When law came, it was to multiply the opportunities of failing, but however great the number of sins committed, grace was even greater; and so, just as sin reigned wherever there was death, so grace will reign to bring eternal life thanks to the righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Commentary
In his letter to the Romans Paul gives two explanations of the passion and death of Christ. The first, at 3.25, was in terms of the annual Jewish sacrifice on the Day of Reconciliation: Christ is the reconciliation for our sins. Now he gives another explanation, in terms of the sin of Adam.
In Hebrew ‘Adam’ means ‘man’ or ‘mankind’, and in the story of the Fall the sin of Adam represents human sinfulness as a whole, the sin of the whole human race. A myth is not a false or inaccurate story; it is a religious or otherwise important truth, conveyed in story form. Death was not part of God’s plan for the human race, but it spread through the whole human race in so far as everyone has sinned. It was not, as the old Latin translation suggested, that in a historical Adam everyone somehow sinned, but in so far as we personally have sinned we are part of Adam, the human race. Death came to all through the sin of one man. In fact Paul says death ‘came to many’, but the Hebrew ‘many’ (and Paul is thinking in Hebrew, though writing in Greek) does not have the sense of the modern word which suggests ‘many but not all’; it is an inclusive word with no hint of exclusion or exception.
However, the obedience of one man, Jesus Christ, wiped out and annulled the disobedience of Adam. It is the obedience of Jesus to his Father that was the source of the free gift, the grace of God, the reconciliation, the renewal of union between God and the human race. The passion of Jesus is the supreme moment of union between Christ and the Father, the supreme moment of loving obedience, which undoes the proud disobedience of Adam, the human race
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Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 39(40):7-10,17
Here I am, Lord! I come to do your will.
You do not ask for sacrifice and offerings,
but an open ear.
You do not ask for holocaust and victim.
Instead, here am I.
Here I am, Lord! I come to do your will.
In the scroll of the book it stands written
that I should do your will.
My God, I delight in your law
in the depth of my heart.
Here I am, Lord! I come to do your will.
Your justice I have proclaimed
in the great assembly.
My lips I have not sealed;
you know it, O Lord.
Here I am, Lord! I come to do your will.
O let there be rejoicing and gladness
for all who seek you.
Let them ever say: ‘The Lord is great’,
who love your saving help.
Here I am, Lord! I come to do your will.
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Gospel Acclamation
cf.Lk8:15
Alleluia, alleluia!
Blessed are those who,
with a noble and generous heart,
take the word of God to themselves
and yield a harvest through their perseverance.
Alleluia!
Or:
Lk21:36
Alleluia, alleluia!
Stay awake, praying at all times
for the strength to stand with confidence
before the Son of Man.
Alleluia!
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Gospel
Luke 12:35-38
Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit
Jesus said to his disciples:
‘See that you are dressed for action and have your lamps lit. Be like men waiting for their master to return from the wedding feast, ready to open the door as soon as he comes and knocks. Happy those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. I tell you solemnly, he will put on an apron, sit them down at table and wait on them. It may be in the second watch he comes, or in the third, but happy those servants if he finds them ready.’
Commentary
After all this teaching on the conduct of the apostles in the life of the Church Luke turns his attention to the end-time with the little parable in which the master sits the servants down and serves them. It is an image rather than a full-blown story-parable. It no doubt comes from the source shared with Matthew, though it is scarcely the idea which sparked Matthew’s story-parable of the ten wedding-attendants. In its present position, after the teaching on the conduct of the mission, it must be intended as an exhortation to perseverance, a favourite virtue of Luke), to carry on till the end, whenever that may be. However, a parable can have several applications or several meanings. In the mouth of Jesus was it originally a warning that the Day of the Lord was imminent, the sort of warning which went with the preaching of John the Baptist and Jesus’ own early proclamation? Paul certainly expected the final coming of the Lord to occur within a lifetime or two, and shaped his view of the prospects for married life and the education of children on that assumption (1 Corinthians 7). But as the Day of the Lord continued to delay, the interpretation of such figures changed from immediacy to imminence.
The teaching has the same theme as Matthew’s parable, the need to make provision now for the future, but there is no mention of the opposite excesses into which the unfaithful servant falls in the other synoptic gospels, maltreating the rest of the household
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